


paradis perdu

by quixoticlux



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, California setting, F/M, Modern AU, One-Shot, mention of Ben/Jess, mention of Rey/other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticlux/pseuds/quixoticlux
Summary: Not that Rey had been waiting for him or anything. While Ben focused on his anthropology degree, Rey went to audition after audition, settling for a JC Penney ad modeling back-to-school fashions. She long grew out of her ugly duckling phase, blossoming into someone every jock who was mean to her in high school sends a “heyyy” to on Facebook.It’s not like she was going to put her entire life on hold, waiting for that one moment when Ben would realize what he really wanted was right in front of him all along. Her life isn’t a rom-com. There’s no song playing in the background right now as they lie together on the beach.Just the sound of gentle whooshing in her ear and seagulls cawing in the distance.“I’m going to ask Jess to marry me,” she hears Ben say, breaking her fantasy of them being the only two people left on earth. And instantly killing her buzz while he’s at it.She thinks maybe she anticipated this; felt it in her bones the way a seismograph can detect an earthquake from thousands of miles away.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 192





	paradis perdu

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a small one-shot expanded from a microfic I posted on Twitter. The prompt word was "ring."

* * *

The breeze rolling off the tides carries a hint of seaweed and salt. It’s a nice change from the smog on the congested interstates, or the smell of vinegar and battered fish and chips that wafts up into Rey’s studio from the takeaway shop downstairs.

She’s glad Ben suggested this. It’s been too long since it’s just been them.

They’re lying next to each other on a woven falsa blanket, staring up through sunglasses at clouds drifting across the cerulean sky as they sip from pint cans of Guinness. It’s a little chilly for March in Southern California, and it’s always a few degrees colder next to the ocean. She’s glad she’s wearing a flannel shirt. She’s also glad Ben doesn’t recognize it’s his, stolen from his room years ago.

Rey wishes it can always be like this. That nothing has to change.

She’s known Ben since they were fourteen, when she was placed with Plutt after five other foster homes and one group home. The only good thing about living with Plutt in his shitty apartment above his shitty repair shop was that it was in Santa Monica, so she was able to go to a decent high school.

And that’s where she met Ben.

She was bored and lonely, and after watching him for a while, she figured maybe he was bored and lonely, too. So one day at lunch, she pulled out the always-empty seat across from him at his small round table, plopped down as if she sat there all the time, and asked who he was sketching as she casually stole a few of his fries (Paige Tico, it turned out). He was the quiet kid, always trying to make himself smaller, as if he could. Meanwhile, Rey was the loud one, always trying to make herself larger like a cat puffing up its fur, not afraid to claw the eyes out of anyone who made fun of her thrift store clothes. No one made fun of Ben. Not only did he have the stature of a basketball player, but apparently he once flipped out in middle school and threw a desk at Hux.

Despite his kind of scary reputation, or maybe because of it, girls were drawn to him—not that he seemed to notice. Maybe they thought he was a bad boy, despite his almost-encyclopedic knowledge of _Lord of the Rings_. More likely, they saw what Rey wouldn’t admit to have seen herself, at least not back then: he was gorgeous. He hadn’t yet grown into his features, his body lanky, his mannerisms awkward, and yet he had a presence about him that refused to be ignored, even when he wanted to be.

It took a while for him to warm up to her, but Rey was nothing if not resilient. If she could survive the kind of conditions Charles Dickens would love to describe, she could take Ben Solo giving her the cold shoulder. At lunch every day, she chattered about anything that popped into her head as he ignored her, seemingly engrossed in his drawings. She would try not to make it obvious she was eyeing the food on his tray, though he always ended up pushing it towards her anyway.

In bio, she would tell the teacher she was his lab partner even when he insisted he didn’t need one. On a field trip to the California Science Center one November, she sat next to him on the brown vinyl seat in the back, considering it a battle won when he removed one earbud.

He was her best friend, and eventually, she became his.

The kids at school and even his parents would mercilessly tease that they were dating. Girls would give Rey the evil eye whenever they’d walk down the hall together. Han got a kick out of making Ben’s ears turning red every time he’d half-joke, “Use a condom, kids.”

Ben would glare or roll his eyes, but otherwise, he never said anything back.

Meanwhile, Rey would brush it off, laughing or sometimes even grimacing to hide the fact that she secretly wished they were. She might have overplayed it a little sometimes.

As the years passed, she tried to look for deeper meaning in the mix CDs he made her with bands she never even heard of; in the bowls of mac & cheese he made her after school. But his eyes never lingered on her lips, or the slivers of skin she’d “accidentally” reveal. Junior year, she even got her navel pierced just so she could constantly lift up her shirt, asking him if he thought it looked infected (it wasn’t). He never found excuses to touch her. He never swung an arm behind her when watching movies on his bed, even if he would let her pick what to watch 99% of the time.

(She can still hear his, “‘10 Things I Hate About You’ _again_? Really?” even though they haven’t watched anything together in a long time.)

It shattered her heart when he got a girlfriend senior year. Jessika Pava—a cheerleader, just to twist that knife in her back. They’d always made fun of the jocks and preps, and there he was, dating one. Maybe she wouldn’t have been as upset if he’d decided to date someone smart and nice, like Rose Tico. But Jessika Pava? _Really_?

And here he was, six years later, _still_ dating her.

Rey can’t believe it. Jessika was supposed to be a phase. A “I always secretly wondered what it would be like to be in the cool crowd” chapter of his life that would close after graduation. When they were still together all summer, she thought surely they’d break up when they went to UCLA. Teen movies practically promised this.

But then freshman year came, and that’s when the shift started happening—the slow, almost imperceptible drifting apart of the two best friends, like an iceberg breaking off from a glacier where they know it’s happening, they’ve seen the reports, but it’s not like they can do anything about it, so they just sip their coffee and go about their day, the sea in between them spanning wider and wider until they don’t know each other anymore. Not really.

It took three more years before they got to that point. Calls turned into texts turned into the odd comment under a photo on Instagram.

Not that Rey had been waiting for him or anything. While Ben focused on his anthropology degree, Rey went to audition after audition, settling for a JC Penney ad modeling back-to-school fashions. She long grew out of her ugly duckling phase, blossoming into someone every jock who was mean to her in high school sends a “heyyy” to on Facebook.

It’s not like she was going to put her entire life on hold, waiting for that one moment when Ben would realize what he really wanted was right in front of him all along. Her life isn’t a rom-com. There’s no song playing in the background right now as they lie together on the beach.

Just the sound of gentle whooshing in her ear and seagulls cawing in the distance.

“I’m going to ask Jess to marry me,” she hears Ben say, breaking her fantasy of them being the only two people left on earth. And instantly killing her buzz while he’s at it.

She thinks maybe she anticipated this; felt it in her bones the way a seismograph can detect an earthquake from thousands of miles away.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him turn to her, but she can’t look at him. Not yet. Even with sunglasses on. Maybe if she doesn’t look at him, what he said isn’t real.

“I bought a ring.”

“Why?” She can’t help the tinge of acid in her voice. It’s coming up from her stomach, which is churning with fear and loss she hadn’t felt since she lost her parents in the accident when she was five. She tries to blame the alcohol on an empty stomach, but she knows herself better than that. A sandwich wouldn't have made a difference.

God, she’s really losing him. Her worst fear is happening. _You’ve already lost him_ , she reminds herself. _In fact, you never really had him._

“Because...” He runs a hand through his long hair; that frustrated tic she knows so well. And that Jess must know, too. “People expect it. _She_ expects it. And I guess I owe it to her, especially being there for me after... when… well, you know.”

She does know. But she can’t think about Han right now. She’s depressed enough as is.

“That’s a lame reason to marry someone,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant. He knows her well, maybe too well, but she likes to think she’s a good actress. She did that one pilot last summer after all, even if it didn’t get picked up.

“Give me another reason.”

“I can think of a lot.” She counts them off on her fingers. “Getting deported and in need of a green card. A will that stipulates you have be married in order to inherit. A reality show where you get married to a stranger for twelve weeks in order to win twenty-thousand dollars and a vacation to the Caribbean—”

“Rey…”

“—but gratitude isn’t one of them.”

Ben sighs heavily. “You don’t understand. You’ve never been in a long-term relationship.”

She feels unexpectedly wounded. The slip of a knife when she wasn’t looking. “Low blow, Solo.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “But it’s true. You have more one-night-stands than anyone I know.”

“How do you know?” she scoffs. “Have you gone round with a poll?”

“Every time I go to your apartment, there’s a random guy leaving, a sheepish expression on his face.”

“That’s not true. You’ve been to my apartment literally _twice_ since I moved in.”

“Well, there was a guy there this morning.”

Oh yeah. Jesse. Or was it Jake? That was kind of awkward... not just that J-name hung around past dawn, but that Ben showed up out of the blue, saying, “We never hang out anymore, let’s go to the beach.” It was suspect, but Rey went along with it. If she knew it was to talk about his marrying Jess, she’d much rather have had this conversation over text. Or maybe she would have just left him on _read._

__

“He was just crashing on the couch,” she lies. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

__

“I’m not judging you. I’m just saying, you don’t understand the pressure.”

__

“Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have been together for thirty-seven years and they’re not married. Seems to work well for them.”

__

Ben sighs again. “Leia keeps bringing up venues. Keeps talking about grandkids.”

__

Out of everything he could have said, this one hurts the most. How much Leia’s been like a mother to her; how often she’s fantasized of being her daughter-in-law. But she keeps all this at a distance, as far away as the horizon of the Pacific. “She’s as subtle as a sledgehammer, that one.”

__

“Yeah.”

__

They fall into the quiet again. After a few minutes, Rey sits up and opens another can, the carbonation fizzing out of the aluminum tab. She takes a long gulp of the stout, the foamy, malty head frothing on her tongue like an ice cream soda. She’s not drunk enough for this. Ben did not buy enough beer for this conversation.

__

“Do you love her?”

__

Ben’s silent. So silent that she thinks he’s fallen asleep. She looks down at him, but she can’t tell with his sunglasses on. She watches his hoodie-clad chest, rising and falling like the waves.

__

“No,” he finally says. “At least, not in the way that matters.”

__

“Then don’t do it,” she says. “You’re just going to regret it. And by then it’ll be too late, when you have 2.5 kids and a mortgage to take care of. You’ll tell yourself you have to stay together for them, just until they’re eighteen, all the while you’re stuck in a life you never wanted, with a wife whose idea of high culture is _Keeping Up With the_ _Kardashians_. And then she’ll just end up running off with someone she met online anyway, and it’ll hit you that the best years of your life have passed you by and there’s no going back. _Ever_.”

__

Ben turns to her. “That’s oddly specific. Is this from a script or something?”

__

“You get my point.”

__

“You know… I get this feeling you don’t like her.”

__

Rey takes another long sip to avoid answering. But that’s an answer in itself.

__

Another long lull. They both watch a ship in the distance, gliding across the sapphire sea.

__

“Have you ever even slept with another person since high school?” she wonders aloud.

__

“Um…”

__

“Well, have you?”

__

“No.” He shifts on the blanket, clearly uncomfortable. His ears no longer turn red when he’s embarrassed, but then again, his hair’s too long to really see. “You sleep with enough people for both of us.”

__

She glares at him. Her sunglasses are obscuring the full depth of her glare like an eclipse, but she’s sure he can feel it.

__

“I’m kidding,” he says, though she’s not really sure he is. “I’ll just live vicariously through you, as always.”

__

“Maybe I’m waiting for the right guy and refuse to settle. Maybe I’m more of a romantic than you think.”

__

“So, what—you have to fuck someone to know whether or not they’re right for you?”

__

“ _No_ , I know they’re all wrong. I’m just having fun in the meantime. And you’re way over-exaggerating, you know you are.”

__

“So what are you saying? I should sleep around before asking Jess to marry me?”

__

That’s not what she meant at all. This is coming out all wrong. What she really wants to say is, _You should sleep with me._ But what comes out is: “No, what I’m saying is, maybe you shouldn’t settle down with the only girl you’ve ever dated. Probably even slept with. Especially if you don’t love her. Fuck other people’s expectations. You can’t live for other people.”

__

“Maybe you’re right,” he admits. “I think maybe… I don’t know, maybe I’m just afraid of being alone again.”

__

“There’s a freedom in being alone.”

__

“Maybe I’m dreading having to move back in with Leia.”

__

“You can stay with me.”

__

“That might be awkward when you bring someone home, considering you live in a studio.”

__

“ _I told you_ , he was just sleeping on the couch.”

__

“Still.”

__

“I promise not to bring anyone home.”

__

“I don’t want to disrupt your life…”

__

“Seriously, I’m not even interested in anyone.”

__

“Is that true?”

__

Rey nods.

__

“That’s a shame,” he mumbles.

__

“Why? ...Don’t tell me you’re trying to set me up with Poe.”

__

“No, no… I just…” He shakes his head. “I guess I was hoping for another reason. As to why you don’t want me to marry Jess.”

__

Rey stares at him, her heart pumping way too fast despite how fragile it is, forgetting the walls she’s been slowly building around herself, washed away so easily like sandcastles in a tide. “What?”

__

He sits up and takes his sunglasses off, his hazel eyes boring into her with that Scorpio intensity; that dark, broody passion that feels out of place and time, better suited for a gothic manor with rain and flickering candlelight than sunny California. “Don’t play dumb, Rey. The role doesn't suit you.”

__

But she feels dumb, not understanding this, not understanding him, not understanding at all. “What reason do you want?”

__

His eyes are scanning her face as if he’s looking for something. “Do you really not know?”

__

She’s starting to get angry now. She welcomes it. It warms her like a bonfire, a respite from the bone-deep chill of grief she’s grown used to; a ghost that haunts her apartment waiting for a big break that never comes, waiting for someone to come along that looks and sounds just like Ben, waiting, always waiting. “Know what? Just spit it out, Ben.”

__

“How I feel about you,” he says with a small shrug of one shoulder. “How I always felt about you. You must know. There’s no way you don’t.”

__

All the air in Rey’s lungs has rushed out. She feels like there’s no oxygen anywhere, despite being outside, on a wild part of the shore of Point Dume that reminds her of how beautiful nature is without the touch of mankind. It feels undiscovered, as if no one else has ever been here before. No one but them. _Un paradis perdu_. “What are you talking about?”

__

Ben sinks back down onto the blanket and puts his sunglasses back on, but before he does, she sees him roll his eyes. “Nothing. Forget it.”

__

But Rey’s never been one to let things go. She leans over him, invading his space. This close, she smells the citrus and vetiver of his cologne, and the unique smell that’s just him. “I need you to say it.”

__

When he doesn’t say anything, she pokes his ribs. “ _Say it_.”

__

He holds his side. “That fucking hurt, you know.”

__

“Not as much as you’ve hurt me, trust me.”

__

“What? I never hurt you...”

__

“You _have_. Just... _please_ , Ben. I need to hear it. How do you feel?”

__

“You really don’t know? You’re not just being a brat right now? Pretending you don’t know to—”

__

“Ben, I swear to god—”

__

“ _I fucking love you, okay_?” he half-yells in the small cove of their paradise, where he’s finally allowed to say it, away from everybody else. It’s out there now, where it rises above the steep cliffs looming above them, up into the stratosphere.

__

This time, Rey doesn’t freeze. The fire from earlier has loosened her limbs, heat streaking through her veins as she grabs his face in her hands, leans all the way down, and crashes her lips upon his.

__


End file.
